Regarding environmentalism, a reader wrote the following on my Facebook thread, in response to my article criticizing the Biden regime for imposing electric vehicles and stoves on the population, rather than leaving it to market forces and individual judgment:
As much as we want to make fun of the government, we shouldn’t attack electric vehicles.
Would you agree that there is no natural function within capitalism to take care of the environment?
Even Ayn Rand was not an anarchist.
I am not attacking electric vehicles. I am attacking the government for gradually outlawing fossil fuels — by force. If electric vehicles were as great as the Biden regime insists — or even as great as you claim — they would not need the protection of government force to create a mass market. Rest assured, the mass market would come about naturally and drive down prices. There’s a reason why electric vehicles are not ready for market, at least on a wide scale. They are not up to the job that fossil fuels are. That’s just a fact.
I don’t agree with the argument that “capitalism cannot keep the environment safe.” This is nothing more than the Communist/fascist excuse for taking over the whole economy. “If we don’t take it over, and mandate electric vehicles, etc., then the world will end.” If we EVER have to depend on people like the Communists, fascists or American politicians to save us, then — believe me — we were not capable of being saved. I have more trust in the market — in real people, the ones who eventually correct themselves (unlike unaccountable statists and politicians) — than the elites running the World Economic Forum. Good grief. I can’t even believe we need to have this discussion on a thread like this. Collectivism over capitalism — really? Have you heard of the Soviet Union? Look at how the United States economy (and culture) have degenerated since we have developed more and more central planning, starting in earnest during the New Deal and growing (with occasional pauses, as in the Reagan years a little bit) ever since.
It’s a false alternative to suggest: “You’re against the benefits and innovation of electric cars if you don’t support government environmental policies from the central planners.” B.S.!!!! It’s precisely because I SUPPORT innovation, progress and market forces that I want more and more capitalism (ideally, unhampered capitalism). Read not just Ayn Rand (and early Alan Greenspan), but also the brilliant Henry Hazlitt and especially Ludwig von Mises. Also, honest thinkers out there, please see George Reisman’s “Capitalism”; Reisman was a student of von Mises, I believe. The case has been made and won, both theoretically and in practice. Idiots who turn environmental causes into their own form of urban/suburban religion have nothing of substance to offer.
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